Sugar in Her Bowl Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Blank Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  SUGAR IN HER BOWL

  India Maslany

  Copyright © 2015 India Maslany

  All rights reserved.

  To Peri and Dougray — my life, my light and my joy.

  I.M.

  Sugar in Her Bowl

  Tired of bein' lonely, tired of bein' blue

  I wished I had some good man, to tell my troubles to

  Seem like the whole world's wrong

  Since my man's been gone

  I need a little sugar in my bowl

  I need a little hot dog on my roll

  I can stand a bit of lovin', oh so bad

  I feel so funny, I feel so sad

  I need a little steam-heat on my floor

  Maybe I can fix things up, so they'll go

  What's the matter hard papa

  Come on and save your mama's soul

  'Cause I need a little sugar, in my bowl, doggone it

  I need a some sugar in my bowl

  I need a little sugar in my bowl

  I need a little hot dog between my rolls

  You gettin' different, I've been told

  Move your finger, drop something in my bowl

  I need a little steam-heat on my floor

  Maybe I can fix things up, so they'll go

  Get off your knees, I can't see what you're drivin' at

  It's dark down there looks like a snake!

  C'mon here and drop somethin' here in my bowl

  Stop your foolin' and drop somethin' in my bowl

  “I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” - Bessie Smith

  Chapter 1

  Charleston, S.C.

  October 3, 1932

  Lamont Barnes and his wife Velma sat before the waning fire in their bedroom. Their biweekly evening of sex had ended as quickly as it began. The dim flames caused the sweat on their bodies to glisten. Lamont reached for Velma, pawing at her exposed breast, the dark cherry of her nipple in his large brown fingers.

  Velma shifted slightly on the blanket they had place before the fireplace. It had been her suggestion to have sex there, on the floor, in front of the fireplace. This had been enough to arouse him that she didn't have to work up his erection. By the time they had undressed, he was fully erect. He laughed at the shadow his manhood cast against the fading wallpaper beside the bed.

  The reality was Velma didn't feel like changing the sheets on the bed. Confining their sex to a blanket on the floor made for an easier laundry load. It also meant that he would mount her from behind, which he did, there on that blanket before the then-roaring fire, thrusting with vigor as he grasped her still firm, round rump. She preferred that to his typical missionary position in the bed. Lamont was a heavy man, sweaty and overweight, and having him atop her would often meant she couldn't breathe for the five minutes he spent rocking back and forth before pulling out and ejaculating on her breasts.

  Their bedroom was part of an aging three-story house that stood in a steamy and decrepit part of Charleston. Despite its age, the house was well cared for. Lamont was good with his hands in that way (though not in others, Velma often thought). Velma kept the house clean and well cared for on the inside.

  Had a guest to Charleston, and a wealthy one at that, walked into the sitting room of the Barnes house, they would have thought that Lamont and Velma lived a pleasant, cozy and comfortable married life.

  Had that same guest walked into their bedroom, they would have surmised that Lamont and Velma lived a perfunctory, faded marriage.

  Lamont leaned over and began kissing Velma's nipple. She could smell the cold sweat coming off him and she felt like she needed to bathe. But she knew that it was best to let Lamont have what he wanted. He would eventually fall asleep. There was only so much sex he could conduct before sleep overtook him.

  His large hands went down her torso, running over the curve of her hips.

  "You want to go again?" she asked, not believing what he was doing. He looked at her in the tiny gleam of the bedroom fire and said, "I can go all night, woman," he said. His teeth shone, glittering for a moment. He immediately placed his hand between her legs, running his fingers back and forth over her damp pubic hair.

  "I'm messy down there," she protested.

  "Gonna be a whole lot more messy in a minute," he said, moving her back into a dog-like position.

  Lamont leaned back, found his penis, and began rubbing it in the cleft of Velma's buttocks, rocking against her as she wiped at her forehead with one hand while steading herself on the floor with the other.

  There was a time when Lamont was a clean-shaven and dapper man. He had been manservant to a local shipping magnate for many years, saving every penny each of those years until he could afford the house in which he and Velma lived.

  Velma had also served, she as a maid to the magnate's family. It was in their former employer's house that Lamont met Velma.

  She had been and still was a beautiful woman. While most servant women's looks faded quickly from lack of primping and personal care, Velma had been blessed with looks that had yet to fade.

  Her breasts swayed in the fading light as Lamont huffed and puffed from behind her. His hands found her chest and he began squeezing tight. Velma moaned, not so much from pleasure as from the tight grip her husband held on her breasts. The sound was enough to elicit moans from Lamont. His motion intensified and he returned his hands to her buttocks, grasping at her warm brown skin.

  Lamont and Velma -- Mr. and Mrs. Barnes - on the floor of their bedroom, indulging in marital relations in the bedroom of their aging, though well-kept house. They both felt pride for their house and the sparse belongings they had managed to acquire over the years, most of it from auctions held throughout the city.

  The curtains of red damask that covered the bedroom windows kept out the drizzling and creeping fog that had overtaken Charleston in the past several days. Those curtains had been purchased for less that a week's wages yet were in such fine condition that they would probably outlive the Barneses.

  Velma looked at the curtains and their pattern as she rocked back and forth, listening to Lamont grunt. His pace was quickening. Soon he would pull out and --

  "I wanna do it on your chest," he wheezed.

  "Okay," she said quietly.

  "No, I want to do it on your face," he said.

  "What? You can't be coming in my face," Velma said.

  His thumb pressed against her anus. She tensed. Lamont would sometimes put his large fingers in places not accustomed to such.

  "Ok, I'll just do it here," he said, patting her rump. "But first, you need to grind, baby," Lamont muttered.

  Lamont stopped rocking as Velma took over, circling her hips and her ass against his cock, rocking against it, as Lamont stood rigid, his face upturned and his eyes closed. Despite her overall lack of interest in sex, she managed to perform her wifely duty well. She studied the pattern in the curtains, imagining
herself somewhere else, being taken by someone else, such as the magnate's son, a strapping young man she had watched from afar so many times.

  Velma imagined it was him behind her and she began grinding even more, causing Lamont to moan like a beast in the woods. She found herself enjoying the girth her husband possessed, even though she imagined it was the magnate's son, a man whose name she had somehow forgotten, but she never forgot his muscular frame when he would return from the shore with his betrothed, the daughter of a local attorney.

  Velma imagined herself as that pretty young woman, who lacked for nothing and had no cares in the world, except to wed the magnate's son and make babies for him, heirs to their family's combined fortunes. She felt herself getting wetter and wetter.

  "Ooh, slow down, girl," Lamont said, rasping. "You gonna make me come too soon."

  Velma reached up and grasped the edge of the armchair where Lamont usually sat before bed, smoking his pipe. It was a habit he picked up from his former employer. Velma didn't mind the pipe tobacco. It had a rich smell that seemed pleasant and homey to her. It was only when Lamont packed it with the reefer he sometimes acquired from the sailors did she mind.

  She gripped the sides of the armchair, staring into the dull fire. It had been an expensive armchair, but Velma had found it at an estate sale and purchased it for far less than what it would have fetched at an antique shop. It was a beautiful chair and Lamont loved it. It was comfortable.

  He had tried selling it after Velma had taken ill, but the man who wanted to buy it suspected that the Barneses were desperate to sell and offered for less than what Velma had paid, so they kept the chair in their faded, worn bedroom.

  As Velma gripped the chair while Lamont continued to push himself inside her, she thought that the chair and the curtains were the only true things of value in this room.

  Eventually, Lamont began to pick up speed. The friction intensified and Velma found herself no longer thinking about armchairs or curtains. She went back to the thought of the magnate's son. She moaned as Lamont quickly climaxed and came across Velma's shapely, quivering buttocks.

  They lay side by side on the blanket, staring up at the ceiling. Velma looked at the framed pictures on the wall, black and white photos of family members, staring down at their naked bodies.

  Lamont looked up, admiring his wife's body. "Girl, I could look at you naked all the live-long day," he whispered.

  Velma turned and looked at him. Something in his face touched her. He seemed young again, smitten with her.

  But appearances are deceiving, and they were more than usually deceiving with regard to this unfortunate couple. Despite the quality furniture they possessed, that outward sign of respectability and good fortune, they were nearing the end of their rope. Velma suspected that Lamont's increased sexual appetite was his way of trying to cope with the fact that work was impossible to find and debts were impossible to pay off.

  They had already learned to live off of the most meager of meals. Keeping the house warm was a luxury. What firewood they could secure they used to keep the bedroom warm. The beloved pipe tobacco was no more either.

  Velma, despite her lack of ardent fervor toward her husband, knew what all this meant to Lamont. For someone who had worked so hard most of his life and had poured what he had into a home of his own, Lamont was feeling the weight of life and doing his best to keep their marital life as continuous as possible. Velma understood this well enough that she had managed to save up for a packet of pipe tobacco, which she had given him this very evening before he suggested sex.

  Lamont was touched by her gift, in a way that surprised Velma, because he had not reacted in such a way for so long. His woman's love for him in that simple gesture forced tears to his eyes. Husband and wife both felt moved in that odd moment, in an odd, unemotional way. Their sex soon followed after the gift, Lamont's feeble attempt to show appreciation.

  Velma's husband had not guessed -- how could he have guessed with his slowing mind? -- that Velma had more than once regretted so bitterly the money spent on such trivial things because of the bottomless depths of debt they now experienced, despite their surroundings, a divide between those who enjoy the security of respectable living and those submerged due to a lack of ability in themselves or being held fast by the circumstances of society and what it did to the masses, struggling until the bitter end.

  Despite being homeowners, the Barneses were still regarded as part of a lower class, due mostly to their skin color. Though their neighborhood was largely black, they were relegated to a part of town far from the pale pastel buildings belonging to the whites. Still, Lamont and Velma were always ready to help those less fortunate than them. Had they been white or more flush with finances, as those they served for so many years, their hearts and minds would have still been eager to help those in need.

  There was only one person who might take kindness toward them: Lamont's ex-wife's mother. A freed slave who had been considered family by her owners, Lamont's ex-mother-in-law had inherited land and a sizable portion of her former owners' holdings, as they had no children and considered this woman the closest thing to family. Lamont's first wife had died of cholera several years before he met Velma in the magnate's house. Still, he was close to his former mother-in-law, having helped her on many occasions since she lived further down the South Carolina coast, reachable by a two-day trip by horse.

  His mother-in-law also cared for Lamont's daughter by his first wife, Dalia. For the past week, Lamont had considered writing his former mother-in-law, but he suspected that she would ignore his message. Although she dearly loved Dalia as her proper grandchild, she had grown cold toward Lamont, especially after he married Velma. She found it cruel that he would bed another woman in the same bed which he had consummated his marriage to her now-dead daughter.

  There were others in the magnate's estate, fellow servants, but Lamont and Velma had lost touch with these folk, except for one: a young black man named Carter who visited at least once a month to share news and to share a meal.

  Carter's grandfather had been over Lamont in his early years of service to the magnate and they had formed a paternal bond. Carter had served the magnate's family for just a few years before deciding to strike out on his own and begin a career as a Pinkerton detective. Such a thing might have seemed strange to most outsiders, a black man as a form of law enforcement, but in Charleston, each ethnic group looked after their own.

  When Lamont and Velma first purchased the house that had brought them an ever-lengthening string of bad luck, Lamont encouraged Carter to visit often, because his tales of crime and vice were enthralling, providing free drama for the Barneses. Carter, young and eager in his profession, never declined the opportunity to share tales at times lurid and scandalous.

  But lately, Lamont didn't want to hear such tales of people being captured after crimes of passion or narrowly escaping the justice Carter felt they so richly deserved. Their dire straits made even these harrowing tales of law and order empty and devoid of enjoyment.

  Still, Carter visited regularly, timing his visits such that the food he brought coincided with mealtime. He would present the meals as the largesse of a client or family who had been impressed by his detective work in solving a case or lending assistance in delicate matters. Because it was so much food, he wanted to share it with people who had cared about him long after his family had died. Carter was an only child, his parents and close relatives all having perished due to disease and tragedy.

  He had quietly offered Lamont a loan and the former servant reluctantly had accepted $50 to handle expenses. Not much was left. Lamont could jingle the coins that remained in his pants pocket. Everything that was light enough to easily transport out of the house had been sold, despite Velma's hatred for pawnshops. "I'd rather starve to death than put my foot in one of those depressing places," she yelled at Lamont one night when he quietly suggested pawning his pocket watch.

  Velma said nothing however when the little
keepsakes in the house began to disappear, including the pocket watch that had been given to Lamont that had been given to him after his first employer had died, a surgeon he had tended to faithfully while the wealthy man wasted from a long and terrible bout with cancer. A ring and a gold tiepin had also disappeared, each a gift from former employers.

  When people such as Lamont and Velma live near the deep canyon that separates the haves from the have-nots and they see themselves sliding toward the edge, however vivacious or extroverted their natures may be, they become deadly quiet for long stretches of time.

  Lamont had been a talkative man. His voice was like amber honey, deep and rich. It was a quality that endeared him to many, including Velma. She loved to hear him read, before he pawned his gilded reading glasses. Now, Lamont barely talked. In fact, the only time he seemed to talk was during their sexual unions and those were becoming less and less frequent.